ft ^ kr-^-l 




I?i-iee lO Oeiitss*. 



AN ADDRESS 



BY THE 



HON^. JOSEPH HOLT, 



TO THE PEOPLE OF KENTUCKY, 



DELIVEEED AT LOUISVILLE. JULY Um. 1861 



A7.S0 



HIS LETTEK TO J. F. SPEED, ESQ. 



N'EW YORK; 
JAMES G. GREGORY, 

( e C C C E S S O R TO W . A . T U W X S E >' D & CO..) 

NO. 4G WALKER STKEET. 
186L 



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Works of Charles Dickens, 

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NO. 46 WALKER STREET, N. Y. 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 



AN ADDRESS 



BY THE 



HOK JOSEPH HOLT, 



TO THE PEOPLE OF KENTUCKY, 



DELIYERED AT LOUISYILLE, JULY 13th, 1861: 



ALSO 



HIS LILTTEK. TO J. F. SPEED, ESQ. 

>- . ^^ 



NEW YORK: 
JAMES G. GREGORY, 

(SUC0E88OE TOW. A'. T0WN8END & CO..) 

NO. 46 WALKER STREET. 
1861. 



« €. C 



« . , C 






JW eXCiiANCB 



C A . A L V O R D PRINTER. 



iDDRESS OF HOX. JOSEPH HOLT. 



Mr. Holt M^as next introduced to the au iience by Hon. Henry Pirtle, 
who addressed him a few words of welcome. 

Then taking the stand, amid prolonged cheers, Mr. Holt spoke as fol- 
lows : — 

Judge Pirtle : I beg you to be assured that I am most thankful for this dis- 
tinguished and flattering welcome, and for every one of the kind words which 
have just fallen from your lips, as I am for the hearty response they have 
received. Spoken by anybody and anywhere, these words would have been 
cherished by me ; but spoken by yourself and in the presence and on behalf 
of those in whose midst I commenced the battle of life, whose friendship I 
have ever labored to deserve, and in whose fortunes I have ever felt the live- 
liest sympathy, they are doubly grateful to my feelings. I take no credit to 
myself for loving and being faithful to such a government as this, or for ut- 
tering, as I do, with every throb of my existence, a prayer for its preserva- 
tion. In regard to my oflBcial conduct, to which you have alluded with such 
earnest and generous commendation, I must say that no merit can be accorded 
to me beyond that of having humbly but sincerely struggled to perform a 
public duty, amid embarrassments which the world can never fully know. 
In reviewing what is past, I have and shall ever have a bitter sorrow, that, 
while I was enabled to accomphsh so little in behalf of our betrayed and suf- 
fering country, others were enabled to accomplish so much against it. You 
do me exceeding honor in associating me in your remembrance with the hero 
of Fort Sumter. There is about his name an atmosphere of light that can 
never grow dim. Surrounded with his httle band, by batteries of treason and 
by infuriated thousands of traitors, the fires upon the altar of patriotism at 
which he ministered, only waxed the brighter for the gloom that enveloped 
him, and history will never forget that it was from these fires that was kin- 
dled that conflagration that now blazes throughout the length and breadth of 
the land. Brave among the bravest, incorruptible and unconquerable in his 
loyalty, amid all the perplexities and trials and sore humihations that beset 
him, he well deserves that exalted position in the affections and confidence of 



4 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

the people that he now enjoys; and while none have had better opportuni- 
ties of knowing this than myself, so I am sure that none could have a prouder 
joy in bearing testimony to it than I have to-night. 

Fellow-Citizens: A few weeks since, in another form, I ventured freely 
to express my views upon those tragic events which have brought sorrow to 
every hearthstone and to every heart in our distracted country, and it is not 
my purpose on this occasion to repeat those views, or to engage m any ex- 
tended discussion of the questions then examined. It is not necessary that 
I should do so, since the argument is exhausted, and the popular mmd is per- 
fectly famihar with it in all its bearings. I will, however, with your permis- 
sion submit a few brief observations upon the absorbing topics of the day 
and 'if I do so with an earnestness and emphasis due alike to the sincerity of 
my convictions and to the magnitude of the interests involved, it is trusted 
that none will be offended, not even those who may most widely differ from 

"" Could one, an entire stranger to our history, now look down upon the 
South and see there a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand men march- 
in- in' hostile array, threatening the capture of the capital and the dismem- 
berment of the territory of the republic; and could he look agam and see 
that this army is marshalled and directed by officers recently occupying dis- 
tinguished places in the civil and mihtary service of the country ; and further 
that the states from which this army has been drawn appear to be one vast 
seething cauldron of ferocious passion, he would very naturally conclude that 
the government of the United States had committed some great crime agamst 
its people, and that this uprising was in resistance to wrong and outrages 
which had been borne until endurance was no longer possible. And yet no 
conclusion could be further from the truth than this. The government of the 
United States has been faithful to all its constitutional obligations For 
eighty years it has maintained the national honor at home and abroad, and 
by its prowess, its wisdom, and its justice, has given to the title of an Amer- 
ican citizen an elevation among the nations of the earth which the citizens of 
no repubUc has enjoyed since Rome was mistress of the world. Under its 
administration the national domain has stretched away to the Pacific and that 
constellation which announced our birth as a people, has expanded from thir- 
teen to thirty-four stars, all, untQ recently, moving undisturbed and undimmed 
in their orbs of hght and grandeur. The rights of no states have been in- 
vaded- no man's property has been despoiled, no man's liberty abridged, no 
man's 'life oppressively jeopardized by the action of this government. Under 
its benign influences the rills of public and private prosperity have swelled 
into rivulets, and from rivulets into rivers ever brimming m their fullness, 
and everywhere, and at all periods of its history, its ministrations have fallen 
as gently on the people of the United States as do the dews of a Summer s 
night on the flowers and grass of the gardens and fields. 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 6 

Whence, then, this revolutionary outbreak ? Whence the secret spring of 
this gigantic conspiracy, which, hke some huge boa, had completely coiled 
itself around the limbs and body of the republic, before a single hand was 
lifted to resist it ? Strange, and indeed startling, as the announcement must 
appear when it falls on the ears of the next generation, the national tragedy^ 
in whose shadow we stand to-night, has come upon us because, in November 
last, John C. Breckinridge was not elected President of the United States, 
and Abraham Lincoln was. This is the whole story. And I would pray 
now to know on what was John C. Breckinridge fed that he has grown so 
great, that a repubUc founded by "Washington and cemented by the best 
blood that has ever coursed in human veins, is to be overthrown because, for- 
sooth, he cannot be its President ? Had he been chosen we well know that 
we should not have heard of this rebellion, for the lever with which it is being 
moved would have been wanting to the hands of the conspirators. Even 
after his defeat, could it have been guaranteed, beyond all peradventure, that 
Jeff. Davis, or some other kindred spirit, would be the successor of Mr. Lin- 
coln, I presume we hazard nothing in assuming that this atrocious move- 
ment against the government would not have been set on foot. So much for 
the principle involved in it. This great crime, then, with which we are grap- 
pling, sprang from that "sin by which the angels fell" — an unmastered and 
profligate ambition — an ambition that "would rather reign in hell than serve 
in heaven" — that would rather rule supremely over a shattered fragment of 
the repubhc than run the chances of sharing with others the honors of the 
whole. 

The conspirators of the South read in the election of Mr. Lincoln a de- 
claration that the Democratic party had been prostrated, if not finally de- 
stroyed, by the selfish intrigues* and corruptions of its leaders ; they read, 
too, that the vicious, emaciated, and spavined hobby of the slavery agitation, 
on which they had so often rode into power, could no longer carry them be- 
yond a given geographical line of our territory, and that in truth this factious 
and treasonable agitation, on which so many of them had grown great by de- 
bauching and denationahzing the mind of a people naturally generous and 
patriotic, had run its course, and hence, that from the national disgust for 
this demagogueing, and for the inexorable law of population, the time had 
come when all those who had no other political capital than this, would have 
to prepare for retirement to private life, so far at least as the highest offices 
of the country were concerned. Under the influence of these grim discour- 
agements they resolved to consummate at once — what our political history 
shows to have been a long-cherished purpose — the dismemberment of the 
government. They said to themselves : " Since we can no longer monopo- 
lize the great offices of the republic as we have been accustomed to do, we 
will destroy it and build upon its ruins an empire that shall be all our own, 
and whose spoils neither the North nor the East nor the West shall share 



6 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

with us." Deplorable and humiliating as this certainly is, it is but a re- 
hearsal of the sad, sad story of the past. We had, irfdeed, supposed that 
under our Christian civilization we had reached a point in human progress, 
when a republic could exist without having its hfe sought by its own off- 
spring ; but the Catilines of the South have proved that we were mistaken. 
Let no man imagine that because this rebellion has been made by men re- 
nowned in our civil and military history, that it is, therefore, the less guilty 
or the less courageously to be resisted. It is precisely this class of men who 
have Subverted the best governments that have ever existed. The purest 
spirits that have lived in the tide of times, the noblest institutions that have 
arisen to bless our race, have found among those in whom they had most 
confided, and whom they had most honored, men wicked enough, either se- 
cretly to betray them unto death, or openly to seek their overthrow by law- 
less violence. The republic of England had its Monk; the republic of 
France had its Bonaparte; the republic of Rome had its C^sar and its 
Catiline, and the Saviour of the world had his Judas Iscariot. It cannot 
be necessary that I should declare to you, for you know them well, who 
they are whose parricidal swords are now unsheathed against the republic 
of the United States. Their names are inscribed upou a scroll of infamy 
that can never perish. The most distinguished of them were educated by 
the charity of the government on which they are now making war. For 
long years they were fed from its table, and clothed from its wardrobe, and 
had their brows garlanded by its honors. They are the ungrateful sons of a 
fond mother, who dandled them upon her knee, who lavished upon them the 
gushing love of her noble and devoted nature, and who nurtured them from 
the very bosom of her life ; and now, in the frenzied excesses of a licentious 
and baffled ambition, they are stabbing at that bosom with the ferocity with 
which the tiger springs upon his prey. The President of the United States 
is heroically and patriotically struggling to baffle the machinations of these 
most wicked men. I have unbounded gratification in knowing that he has 
the courage to look traitors in the face, and that, in discharging the duties 
of his great office, he takes no counsel of his fears. He is entitled to the 
zealous support of the whole country, and, may I not add without offence, 
that he will receive the support of all who justly appreciate the boundless 
blessings of our free institutions ? 

If this rebellion succeeds it will involve necessarily the destruction of our 
nationality, the division of our territory, the permanent disruption of the re- 
pubUc. It must rapidly dry up the sources of our material prosperity, and 
year by year we shall grow more and more impoverished, more and more 
revolutionary, enfeebled, and debased. Each returning election will bring 
with it grounds for new civil commotions, and traitors, prepared to strike at 
the country that has rejected their claims to power, will spring up on every 
side. Disunion once begun will go on and on indefinitely, and under the in- 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 7 

fluence of tho fatal doctrine of secession, not only will states secede from 
states, but counties will secede from states also, and towns and cities from 
counties, mitil universal anarchy will be consummated in each individual 
who can make good his position by force of arms, claiming the right to defy 
the power of the government. Thus we should have brought back to us 
the days of the robber barons with their moated castles and marauding re- 
tainers. This doctrine when analyzed is simply a declaration that no phys- 
ical force shall ever be employed in executing the laws or upholding the 
government, and a government into whose practical administration such a 
principle has been introduced, could no more continue to exist than a man 
could live with an angered cobra in his bosom. If you would know what 
are the legitimate fruits of secession, look at Virginia and Tennessee, which 
have so lately given themselves up to the embrace of this monster. There the 
schools are deserted; the courts of justice closed; public and private credit 
destroyed; commerce annihilated, debts repudiated; confiscations and spo- 
liations everywhere prevailing ; every cheek blanched with fear, and every 
heart frozen with despair ; and all over that desolated land the hand of in- 
furiated passion and crime is waving, with a vulture's scream for blood, the 
sword of civil war. And this is the Pandemonium which some would have 
transferred to Kentucky. 

But I am not here to discuss this proposition to-night. I wish solemnly 
to declare before you and the world, that I am for this Union without con- 
ditions, one and indivisible, now and forever. I am for its preservation at 
any and every cost of blood and treasure against all its assailants. I know 
no neutrality between my country and its foes, whether they be foreign or 
domestic ; no neutrality between that glorious flag which now floats over us. 
and the ingrates and traitors who would trample it in the dust. My prayer 
is for victory, complete, enduring and overwhelming, to the armies of the 
republic over all its enemies. I am against any and every compromise that 
may be proposed to be made under the guns of the rebels, while, at the 
same time, I am decidedly in favor of aftbrding every reasonable guarantee 
for the safety of Southern institutions, which the honest convictions of the 
people — not the conspirators — of the South may demand, whenever they shall 
lay doiun their arms, hut not until then. The arbitrament of the sword has 
been defiantly thrust into the face of the government and country, and there 
is no honorable escape from it. All guarantees and all attempts at adjust- 
ment by amendments to the constitution are now scornfully rejected, and 
the leaders of the rebellion openly proclaim that they are fighting for their 
independence. In this contemptuous rejection of guarantees, and in this 
avowal of the objects of the rebellion now so audaciously made, we have a 
complete exposure of that fraud which, through the slavery agitation, has 
been practised upon the public creduhty for the last fifteen or twenty years. In 
the light of this revelation, we feel as one awakened from the suffocating 



8 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

tortures of a nightmare, and realize what a baseless dream our apprehen- 
sions have been, &nd of what a traitorous swindle we have been made the 
victims. They are fighting for their independence I Independence of what ? 
Independence of those laws which they themselves have aided in enacting ; 
independence of that constitution which their fathers framed and to which 
they are parties and subject by inheritance ; independence of that beneficent 
government on whose treasury and honors they have grown strong and 
illustrious. When a man commits a robbery on the highway, or a murder in 
the dark, he thereby declares his independence of the laws under which he 
lives, and of the society of which he is a member. Should he, when ar- 
raigned, avow and justify the offence, he thereby becomes the advocate of 
the independence he has thus declared ; and, if he resists by force of arms 
the officer, when dragging him to the prison, the penitentiary, or the gallows, 
he is thereby fighting for the independence he has thus declared and advo- 
cated ; and such is the condition of the conspirators of the South at this mo- 
ment. It is DO longer a question of Southern rights, which have never been 
violated, nor of security of Southern institutions, which we know perfectly 
well have never been interfered with by the general government, but it is 
purely with us a question of national existence. In meeting this terrible 
issue which rebellion has made up with the loyal men of the country, we 
stand upon ground infinitely above all party fines and party platforms — 
ground as sublime as that on which our fathers stood when they fought the 
battles of the revolution. I am for throwing into the contest thus forced 
upon us all the material and moral resources and energies of the nation, in 
order that the struggle may be brief and as little sanguinary as possible. 
It is hoped tkat we shall soon see in the field half a million of patriotic 
volunteers, marching in columns which will be perfectly irresistible, and, 
borne in their hands — for no purpose of conquest or subjugation, but of pro- 
tection only — we may expect within nine months to see the stars and 
stripes floating in every Southern breeze, and hear going up, wild as the 
Storm, the exultant shout of that emancipated people over their deliverance 
from the revolutionary terror and despotism, by which they are now tor- 
mented and oppressed. The war, conducted on such a scale, will not cost 
exceeding four or five hundred millions of dollars ; and none need be startled 
at the vastness of this expenditure. The debt thus created wUl press but 
slightly upon us; it will be paid and gladly paid by posterity, who wiU make 
the best bargain which has been made since the world began, if they can se- 
cure to themselves, in its integrity and blessings, such a government as this, 
at such a cost. But, if in this anticipation we are doomed to disappoint- 
ment ; if the people of the United States have already become so degenerate 
— may I not say so craven — in the presence of their foes as to surrender up 
this republic to be dismembered and subverted by the traitors who have 
reared the standard of revolt against it, then, I trust, the volume of Ameri- 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 9 

can history will be closed and sealed up forever, and that those who shall 
survive this national humiliation will take unto themselves some other name, 
— some name having no relation to the past, no relation to our great ances- 
tors, no relation to those monuments and battle-fields which commemorate 
alike their heroism, their loyalty, and their glory. 

But with the curled lip of scorn we are told by the disunionists that in 
thus supporting a Republican administration in its endeavors to uphold the 
constitution and the laws, we are "submissionists," and when they have 
pronounced this word, they suppose they have imputed to us the sum of all 
human abasement. "Well, let it be confessed; we are "submissionists," and 
weak and spiritless as it may be deemed by some, we glory in the position 
we occupy. For example: the law says, "Thou shalt not steal;" we sub- 
mit to this law, and would not for the world's worth rob our neighbor of his 
forts, his arsenals, his arms, his munitions of war, his hospital stores, or any 
thing that is his. Indeed, so impressed are we with the obligations of this 
law, that we would no more think of plundering from our neighbor half a 
million of dollars because found in his unprotected mints, than we would 
think of filching a purse from his pocket in a crowded thoroughfare. "Write 
us down, therefore, "submissionists." Again: the law says, "Thou shalt 
not swear falsely ;" we submit to this law, and while in the civil or military 
service of the country, with an oath to support the constitution of the United 
States resting upon our consciences, we would not for any earthly considera- 
tion engage in the formation or execution of a conspiracy to subvert that 
very constitution, and with it the government to which it has given birth. 
"Write us down, therefore, again, "submissionists." Yet again: when a 
President has been elected in strict accordance with the form and spirit of 
the constitution, and has been regularly installed into office, and is honestly 
striving to discharge his duty by snatching the republic from the jaws of a 
gigantic treason which threatens to crush it, we care not what his name may 
or may not be, or what the designation of his political party, or what the 
platform on which he stood during the presidential canvass ; we believe we 
fulfil' in the sight of earth and heaven our highest obligations to our country, 
in giving to him an earnest and loyal support in the struggle in which he is 
engaged. 

Nor are we at all disturbed by the flippant taunt that in thus submitting 
to the authority of our government we are necessarily cowards. We know 
whence this taunt comes, and we estimate it at its true value. "We hold that 
there is a higher courage in the performance of duty than in the commission 
of crime. The tiger of the jungle and the cannibal of the South Sea Islands 
have that courage in which the revolutionists of the day make their especial 
boast; the angels of God and the spirits of just men made perfect have had, 
and have that courage which submits to the laws. Lucifer was a non-sub- 
missionist, and the first secessionist of whom history has given us any 



10 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

account, and the chains which he wears fitly, express the fate due to all who 
openly defy the laws of their Creator and of their country. He rebelled be- 
cause the Almighty would not yield to him the throne of heaven. The 
principle of the Southern rebellion is the same. Indeed, in this submission 
to the laws is found the chief distinction between good men and devils. A 
good man obeys the laws of truth, of honesty, of morality, and all those laws 
which have been enacted by competent authority for the government and 
protection of the country in which he lives ; a devil obeys only his own fero- 
cious and profligate passions. The principle on which this rebellion pro- 
ceeds, that laws have in themselves no sanctions, no binding force upon the 
conscience, and that every man, under the promptings of interest, or passion, 
or caprice, may, at will, and honorably too, strike at the government that 
shelters him, is one of utter demoralization, and should be trodden out as you 
would tread on a spark that has fallen on the roof of your dwelling. Its un- 
checked prevalence would resolve society into chaos, and leave you without 
the slightest guarantee for life, liberty, or property. It is time that, in their 
majesty, the people of the United States should make known to the world 
that this government, in its dignity and power, is something more than a 
moot court, and that the citizen who makes war upon it is a traitor, not only 
in theory but in fact, and should have meted out to him a traitor's doom. 
The country wants no bloody sacrifice, but it must and will have peace, cost 
what it may. 

Before closing, I desire to say a few words on the relations of Kentucky to 
the pending rebelUon ; and as we are all Kentuckians here together to-night, 
and as this is purely a family matter, which concerns the honor of us all, I 
hope we may be permitted to speak to each other upon it with entire free- 
dom. I shall not detain you with observations on the hostile and defiant 
position assumed by the governor of your state. In his reply to the requi- 
sition made upon him for volunteers under the proclamation of the President, 
he has, in my judgment, written and finished his own history, his epitaph 
included, and it is probable that in future the world will little concern itself 
as to what his excellency may propose to do, or as to what he may propose 
not to do. That response has made for Kentucky a record that has already 
brought a burning blush to the cheek of many of her sons, and is destined to 
bring it to the cheek of many more in the years which are to come. It is a 
shame, indeed a crying shame, that a state with so illustrious a past should 
have written for her, by her own chief magistrate, a page of history so ut- 
terly humiliating as this. But yoiSr legislature have determined that during 
the present unhappy war the attitude of the state shall be that of strict neu- 
trality, and it is upon this determination that I wish respectfully but frankly 
to comment. As the motives which governed the legislature were doubt- 
less patriotic and conservative, the conclusion arrived at cannot be con- 
demned as dishonorable ; still, in view of the manifest duty of the state and 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 11 

of possible results, I cannot but regard it as mistaken and false, and one 
which may have fatal consequences. Strictly and legally speaking, Ken- 
tucky must go out of the Union before she can be neutral. Within it she is 
necessarily either faithful to the government of the United States, or she is 
disloyal to it. If this crutch of neutrality, upon which her well-meaning but 
ill-judging politicians are halting, can find any middle ground on which to 
rest, it has escaped my researches, though I have diligently sought it. Neu- 
trahty, in the sense of those who now use the term, however patriotically 
designed, is, in effect, but a snake in the grass of rebellion, and those who 
handle it will sooner or later feel its fangs. Said one who spake as never • 
man spake, "He who is not with us is against us ;" and of none of the con- 
flicts which have arisen between men or between nations, could this be more 
truthfully said than of that in which we are now involved. Neutrality nec- 
essarily implies indifference. Is Kentucky indifferent to the issue of this 
contest ? Has she, indeed, nothing at stake ? Has she no compact with her 
sister states to keep, no plighted faith to uphold, no renown to sustain, no 
glory to win ? Has she no horror of that crime of crimes now being com- 
mitted against us by that stupendous rebellion which has arisen like a tem- 
pest-cloud in the South? We rejoice to know that she is still a member of 
this Union, and as such she has the same interest in resisting this rebellion 
that each limb of the body has in resisting a poignard whose point is aimed 
at the heart. It is her house that is on tire ; has she no interest in extin- 
guishing the conflagration ? Will she stand aloof and announce herself neu- 
tral between tlie raging flames and the brave men who are periling their 
lives to subdue them ? Hundreds of thousands of citizens of other states — 
men of culture and character, of thought and of toil — men who have a deep 
stake in life, and an intense appreciation of its duties and responsibihties, 
who know the worth of this blessed government of ours, and do not prize 
even their own blood above it — I say, hundreds of thousands of such men 
have left their homes, their workshops, their offices, their counting-houses, 
and their fields, and are now rallying about our flag, freely offering their all 
to sustain it, and since the days that crusading Europe threw its hosts upon 
the embattled plains of Asia, no deeper, or more earnest, or grander spirit 
has stirred the souls of men than that which now sways those mighty masses 
whose gleaming banners are destined ere long to make bright again the 
earth and sky of the distracted South. Can Kentucky look upon this sub- 
lime spectacle of patriotism unmoved, and then say to herself: "I will spend 
neither blood nor treasure, but I will shrink away while the battle rages, and 
after it has been fought and won, I will return to the camp, well assured 
that if I cannot claim the laurels, I will at least enjoy the blessings of the 
victory ?" Is this all that remains of her chivalry — of the chivalry of the land 
of the Shelbys, the Johnsons, the Aliens, the Clays, the Adairs, and the 
Davises ? Is there a Kentuckian within the sound of my voice to-night, who 



12 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

can hear the anguished cry of his country as she wrestles and writhes in the 
folds of this gigantic treason, and then lay himself down upon his pillow with 
this thought of neutrality, \\ithout feeling that he has something in his 
bosom which stings him worse than would an adder ? Have we, within the 
brief period of eighty years, descended so far from the mountain heights on 
which our fathers stood, that already, in our degeneracy, we proclaim our 
blood too precious, our treasure too valuable to be devoted to the preserva- 
tion of such a government as this? They fought through a seven years' 
war, with the greatest power on earth, for the hope, the bare hope, of being 
able to found this republic, and now that it is no longer a hope nor an ex- 
periment, but a glorious reality, which has excited the admiration and the 
homage of the nations, and has covered us with blessings as "the waters 
cover the channels of the sea, " have we, their children, no years of toil, of 
sacrifice, and of battle even, if need be, to give, to save it from absolute de- 
struction at the hands of men who, steeped in guilt, are perpetrating against 
us and humanity a crime, for which I verily beheve the blackest page of 
the history of the world's darkest period furnishes no parallel? Can it 
be possible that in the history of the American people we have already 
reached a point of degeneracy so low, that the work of Washington and 
Franklin, of Adams and Jefferson, of Hancock and Henry, is to be 
overthrown by the morally begrimed and pigmied conspirators who are now 
tugging at its foundations ? It would be the overturning of the Andes by 
the miserable reptiles that are crawhng in the sands at their base. 

But our neutral fellow-citizens in the tenderness of their hearts say: 
" This effusion of blood sickens us." Then do all in your power to bring it 
to an end. Let the whole strength of this commonwealth be put forth in 
support of the government, in order that the war may be terminated by a 
prompt suppression of the rebellion. The longer the struggle continues, the 
fiercer will be its spirit, and the more fearful the waste of life attending it. 
You therefore only aggravate the calamity you deplore by standing aloof 
from the combat. But again they say, "we cannot fight our brethren." 
Indeed. But your brethren can fight you, and with a good will, too. Wick- 
edly and wantonly have they commenced this war against you and your in- 
stitutions, and ferociously are they prosecuting it. They take no account of 
the fact that the massacre with which they hope their swords will, ere long, 
be clogged, must be the massacre of their brethren. However much we 
may bow our heads at the confession, it is nevertheless true that every free 
people that have existed have been obliged, at one period or other of their 
history, to fight for their liberties against traitors within their own bosoms, 
and that people who have not the greatness of soul thus to fight, cannot long 
continue to be free, nor do they deserve to be so. 

There is not, and there cannot be, any neutral ground for a loyal people 
between their own government and those who, at the head of armies, are 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 13 

menacing its destruction. Your inaction is not neutrality, though you may 
delude yourselves with the belief that it is so. With this rebeUion confronting 
you, when you refuse to co-operate actively with your government in subdu- 
ing it, you thereby condemn the government, and assume towards it an atti- 
tude of antagonism. Your inaction is a virtual indorsement of the rebellion, 
and if you do not thereby give to the rebels precisely that "aid and comfort" 
spoken of in the constitution, you certainly afford them a most powerful en- 
couragement and support. That they regard your present position as friendly 
to them, is proved by the fact that, in a recent enactment of the Confederate 
Congress confiscating the debts due from their own citizens to those of loyal 
states, the debts due to the people of Kentucky are expressly excepted. Is 
not this significant ? Does it leave any room for doubt that the Confederate 
Congress supiX)se they have discovered, under the guise of your neutrality, 
a lurking sympathy for their cause which entitles you to be treated as friends, 
if not as active allies ? Patriotic as was the purpose of her apprehensive 
statesmen in placing her in the anomalous position she now occupies, it can- 
not be denied that Kentucky by her present attitude is exerting a potent in- 
fluence in strengthening the rebellion, and is, therefore, false alike to her 
loyalty and to her fame. You may rest well assured that this estimate of 
your neutrality is entertained by the true men of the country in all the states 
which are now sustaining the government. Within the last few weeks how 
many of those gallant volunteers who have left home and kindred and all 
that is dear to them, and are now under a Southern sun, exposing them- 
selves to death from disease and to death from battle, and are accounting 
their lives as nothing in the effort they are making for the dehverance of 
your government and theirs ; how many of them have said to me in sadness 
and in longing, "Will not Kentucky help me ?" How my soul would have 
leaped could I have answered promptly, confidently, exultingly, "Yes, she 
will." But when I thought of this neutrality my heart sank within me, and 
I did not and I could not look those brave men in the face. And yet I could 
not answer, "No." I could not crush myself to the earth under the self- 
abasement of such a reply. I therefore said — and may my country sustain 
me — "I hope, I trust, I pray, nay, I believe Kentucky will yet do her duty." 

If this government is to be destroyed, ask yourselves are you willing it 
shall be recorded in history that Kentucky stood by in the greatness of her 
strength and lifted not a hand to stay the catastrophe ? If it is to be saved, 
as I verily believe it is, are you wilhng it shaU be written that, in the immeas- 
urable glory which must attend the achievement, Kentucky had no part ? 

I will only add, if Kentucky wishes the waters of her beautiful Ohio to be 
dyed in blood — if she wishes her harvest fields, now waving in their abun- 
dance, to be trampled beneath the feet of hostile soldiery, as a flower-garden 
is trampled beneath the threshings of the tempest — if she wishes the homes 
where her loved ones are now gathered in peace, invaded by the proscriptive 



14 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

fury of a military despotism, sparing neither life nor property — if she wishes 
the streets of her towns and cities grown with grass, and the steamboats of 
her rivers to lie rotting at her wharves, then let her join the Southern Con- 
federacy ; but if she would hare the bright waters of that river flow on in 
their gladness — if she would have her harvests peacefully gathered to her 
garners — if she would have the lullabies of her cradles and the songs of her 
homes uninvaded by the cries and terrors of battle — if she would have the 
streets of her towns and cities again filled with the hum and throngs of busy 
trade, and her rivers and her shores once more vocal with the steamer's 
whistle, that anthem of a free and prosperous commerce, then let her stand 
fast by the stars and stripes, and do her duty and her whole duty as a mem- 
ber of this Union. Let her brave people say to the President of the United 
States: "Tou are our chief magistrate ; the government you have in charge, 
and are striving to save from dishonor and dismemberment, is our govern- 
ment ; your cause is indeed our cause ; your battles are our battles ; make 
room for us, therefore, in the ranks of your armies, that your triumph may 
be our triumph also." 

Even as with the Father of us all I would plead for salvation, so, my 
countrymen, as upon my very knees, would I plead with you for the life, aye 
for the life, of our great and beneficent institutions. But if the traitor's knife, 
now at the throat of the republic, is to do its work, and this government is 
fated to add yet another to that long line of sepulchres which whiten the 
highway of the past, then my heartfelt prayer to God is, that it may be writ- 
ten in history, that the blood of its life was not found upon the skirts of 
Kentucky. 



LETTER OF HON. JOSEPH HOLT. 



Washington, Friday, May 31, 1861. 
J. F. Speed, Esq. 

My Dear Sir : The recent overwhelming vote in favor of the Union 
in Kentucky has afforded unspeakable gratification to all true men throughout 
the country. That vote indicates that the people of that gallant state have 
been neither seduced by the arts nor terrified by the menaces of the revolu- 
tionists in their midst, and that it is their fixed purpose to remain faithful to 
a government which, for nearly seventy years, has remained faithful to 
them. Still it cannot be denied that there is in the bosom of that state a 
band of agitators, who, though few in number, are yet powerful from the 
public confidence they have enjoyed, and who^have been, and doubtless will 
continue to be, unceasing in their endeavor to force Kentucky to unite her 
fortunes with those of the rebel Confederacy of the South. In view of this 
and of the well-known fact that several of the seceded states have by fraud 
and violence been driven to occupy their present false and fatal position, I 
cannot, even with the encouragement of her late vote before me, look upon 
the political future of our native state without a painful solicitude. Never 
have the safety and honor of her people required the exercise of so much 
vigilance and of so much courage on their part. If true to themselves, the 
stars and stripes, which, like angel's wings, have so long guarded their 
homes from every oppression, will still be theirs ; but if, chasing the dreams 
of men's ambition, they shall prove false, the blackness of darkness can but 
faintly predict the gloom that awaits them. The legislature, it seems, has 
determined by resolution that the state, pending the present unhappy war, 
Bhall occupy neutral ground. I must say, in all frankness, and without desiring 
to reflect upon the course or sentiments of any, that, in this struggle for the exis- 
tence of our government, I can neither practise nor pirofess nor feel neutrality- 
I woidd as soon think of being neutral in a contest between an officer of justice 
and an incendiary arrested in an attempt to fire the dwelling over my head ; for 
the government whose overthrow is sought, is for me the shelter not only of home, 
kindred and friends, hut of every earthly blessing which I can hope to enjoy on 



16 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

this side of the grave. If, however, from a natural horror of fratricidal strife, 
or from her intimate social and business relations with the South, Kentucky 
shall determine to maintain the neutral attitude assumed for her by her leg- 
islature, her position will still be an honorable one, though falling far short of 
that full measure of loyalty which her history has so constantly illustrated. 
Her executive, ignoring, as I am happy to believe, alike the popular and 
legislative sentiment of the state, has, by proclamation, forbidden the gov- 
ernment of the United States from marching troops across her territory. 
This is in no sense a neutral step, but one of aggressive hostility. The 
troops of the Federal Government have as clear a constitutional right to pass 
over the soil of Kentucky as they have to march along the streets of Wash- 
ington ; and could this prohibition be effective, it would not only be a viola- 
latiou of the fundamental law, but would, in all its tendencies, be directly in 
advancement of the revolution, and might, in an emergency easily imagined, 
compromise the highest national interests. I was rejoiced that the legisla- 
ture so promptly refused to endorse this proclamation as expressive of the 
true policy of the state. But I turn away from even this to the ballot-box, 
and find an abounding consolation in the conviction it inspires, that the pop- 
ular heart of Kentucky, in its devotion to the Union, is far in advance alike 
of legislative resolve and executive proclamation. 

But as it is well understood that the late popular demonstration has rather 
scotched than killed rebellion in Kentucky, I propose inquiring, as briefly 
as practicable, whether in the recent action or present declared policy of 
the administration, or in the history of the pending revolution, or in the 
objects it seeks to accomplish, or in the results which must follow from it, 
if successful, there can be discovered any reasons why that state should 
sever the ties that unite her with a Confederacy in whose councUs and upon 
whose battle-fields she has won so much fame, and under whose protection 
she has enjoyed so much prosperity. 

For more than a month after the inauguration of President Lincoln, the 
manifestations seemed unequivocal that his administration would seek a 
peaceful solution of our unhappy political troubles, and would look to time 
and amendments of the Federal Constitution, adopted in accordance with its 
provisions, to bring back the revolted states to their allegiance. So marked 
was the effect of these manifestations in tranquilizing the border states and 
in reassuring their loyalty, that the conspirators who had set this revolution 
on foot took the alarm. W7iile affecting to despise these states as not sufficiently 
intensified in their devotion to African servitude, they kneiv they could never 
succeed in their treasonable enterprise ivithout their support. Hence it was 
resolved to precipitate a collision of arms with the federal authorities, in the 
hope that under the panic and exasperation incident to the commencement of 
a civil ruar, the border states, folloiving the natural bent of their syrnpatJties, 
ivould array themselves against the government. Fort Sumter, occupied by a 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 



17 



feeble garrison, and girdled by powerful if not impregnable batteries, afforded 
convenient means for Accomplishing their purpose, and for testing also their 
theory, that blood was needed to cement the new Confederacy. Its provis- 
ions were exhausted, and the request made by the President, in the interests 
of peace and humanity, for the privilege of replenishing its stores, had been 
refused. The Confederate authorities were aware — for so the gaUant comman- 
der of the fort had declared to them — that in two days a capitulation from 
starvation must take place. A peaceful surrender, however, would not have 
subserved their aims. They sought the clash of arms and the effusion of 
blood as an instrumentahty for impressing the border states, and they 
sought the humiliation of the government and the dishonor of its flag as a 
means of giving prestige to their own cause. The result is known. With- 
out the sKghtest provocation, a heavy cannonade was opened upon the fort, 
and borne by its helpless garrison for hours without reply ; and when, in 
the progress of the bombardment, the fortification became wrapped in flames, 
the besieging batteries, in violation of the usages of civilized warfare, in- 
stead of relaxing or suspending, redoubled their fires. A more wanton or 
wicked war was never commenced on any government whose history has been, 
written. Contemporary with and following the fall of Sumter, the siege of 
Fort Pickens was and stiU is actively pressed ; the property of the United 
States government continued to be seized wherever found, and its troops, by 
fraud or force, captured in the state of Texas, in violation of a solemn com- 
pact with its authorities that they should be permitted to embark without 
molestation. This was the requital which the Lone Star State made to 
brave men, who, through long years of peril and privation, had guarded its 
frontiers against the incursions of the savages. In the midst of the most 
active and extended warhke preparations in the South, the announcement 
was made by the Secretary of War of the seceded states, and echoed with 
taunts and insolent bravadoes by the Southern press, that Washington City 
was to be invaded and captured, and that the flag of the Confederate States 
would soon float over the dome of its Capitol. Soon thereafter there followed 
an invitation to all the world — embracing necessarily the outcasts and despe- 
radoes of every sea — to accept letters of marque and reprisal, to prey upon 
the rich and unprotected commerce of the United States. 

In view of these events and threatenings, what was the duty of the chief 
magistrate of the republic ? He might have taken counsel of the revolution- 
ists and trembled under their menaces; he might, upon the fall of Sumter, 
. have directed that Fort Pickens should be surrendered without firing a gun 
in its defence, and proceeding yet further, and meeting fully the requirements 
of the "let us alone" policy insisted on in the South, he might have ordered 
that the stars and stripes should be laid in the dust in the presence of every bit 
of rebel bunting that might appear. Bat he did none of these things^ nor could 
he have done them ivith out forfeiting his oath and betraying the most sublime trust 



18 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

that has ever been confided to the ha^ids of man. With a heroic fidehty to his con- 
stitutional obhgations, feeling justly that these obligations charged him with the 
protection of the republic and its capital against the assaults alike of foreign and 
domestic enemies, he threw himself on the loyalty of the country for support 
in the struggle upon which he was about to enter, and nobly has that appeal 
been responded to. States containing an aggregate population of nineteen 
millions have answered to the appeal as with the voice of one man, offering 
soldiers without number, and treasure without limitation for the service of the 
government. In these states, fifteen hundred thousand freemen cast their 
votes in favor of candidates supporting the rights of the South, at the last 
presidential election, and yet everywhere, alike in popular assembhes and 
upon the tented field, this million and a half of voters are found yielding to 
none in the zeal with which they rally to their country's flag. They are not 
less the friends of the South than before ; but they realize that the question 
now presented is not one of administrative pohcj^, or of the claims of the 
North, the South, the East, or the "West ; but is, simply, whether nineteen 
millions of people shall tamely and ignobly permit five or six miUions to 
overthrow and destroy institutions which are the common property, and 
have been the common blessings and glory of all. The great thoroughfares 
of the North, the East, and the West, are luminous with the banners and glis- 
tening with the bayonets of citizen soldiers marching to the capital, or to the 
other points of rendezvous ; but they come in no hostile spirit to the South. 
If called to press her soil, tfiey will not ruffle a flower of her gardens, nor a blade 
of grass of her fields in unkindness. No excesses will mark the footsteps of the 
armies of the republic ; no institution of the states luill be invaded or tampered 
with, no rights of persons or of property will be violated. The known purposes 
of the administration, and the high character of the troops employed, alike guar- 
antee the truthfulness of this statement. When an insurrection was apprehended 
a few weeks since in Maryland, the Massachusetts regiment at once offered 
their services to suppress it. These volunteers have been denounced by the 
press of the South as "knaves and vagrants," "the dregs and offscourings of 
the populace," who would "rather filch a handkerchief than fight an enemy in 
manly combat;" yet we know here that their discipline and bearing are most 
admirable, and, I presume, it may be safely affirmed, that a larger amount of 
social position, culture, fortune, and elevation of character, has never been 
found in so large an army in any age or country. // they go to the South, it 
will he as friends and protectors, to relieve the Union sentiment of the seceded 
states from the o^el domination by which it is oj^pressed and silenced, to unfurl 
the stars and stripes in the midst of those who long to look upon them, and to 
restore the fiag that bears them to the forts and arsenals from which disloyal 
hands have torn it. Their mission will be one of peace, unless wicked and blood- 
thirsty men shall unsheath the sword across their pathway. 

It is in vain for the revolutionists to exclaim that this is ^^ subjugation.^^ It is 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 19 

50, precisely in the sense in luhich you and I and all law-abiding citizens are 
subjugated. The people of the South are our brethren, and while we obey 
the laws enacted by our joint authority, and keep a compact to which we all 
are parties, we only ask that they shall be required to do the same. We be- 
lieve that their safety demands this; we know that ours does. We impose 
no burden which we ourselves do not bear ; we claim no privilege or bless- 
ing which our brethren of the South shall not equally share. Their country 
is our country, and ours is theirs ; and that unity both of country and of gov- 
ernment which the providence of God and the compacts of men have created, 
we could not ourselves, without self-immolation, destroy, nor can we permit 
it to be destroyed by others. 

Equally vain is it for them to declare that they only wish "to be let alone," 
and that, in establishing the independence of the seceded states, they do 
those which remain in the old confederacy no harm. The free states, if al- 
lowed the opportunity of doing so, will undoubtedly concede every guarantee 
needed to afibrd complete protection to the institutions of the South, and to 
furnish assurances of her perfect equality in the Union; but all such guaran- 
tees and assurances are now openly spurned, and the only Southern right 
now insisted on is that of dismembering the republic. It is perfectly certain, 
that in the attempted exercise of this right, neither states nor statesmen will 
be "let alone." Should a ruffian meet me in the streets, and seek, with his 
axe, to hew an arm and a leg from my body, I would not the less resist him 
because, as a dishonored and helpless trunk, I might perchance survive the 
mutilation. It is easy to perceive what fatal results to the old confederacy 
would fohow, should the blow now struck at its integrity ultimately triumph. 
We can well understand what degradation it would bring to it abroad, and 
what weakness at home ; what exhaustion from incessant war and standing 
armies, and from the erection of fortifications along the thousands of miles of 
new frontiers ; what embarrassments to commerce from having its natural 
channels encumbered or cut oJ9f ; what elements of disintegration and revolu- 
tion would be introduced from the pernicious example ; and, above ah, what 
humiliation would cover the whole American people for having failed in their 
great mission to demonstrate before the world the capacity of our race for 
self-government. 

While a far more fearful responsibility has fallen upon President Lincoln 
than upon any of his predecessors, it must be admitted that he has met it with 
piompiitude and fearlessness. Cicero, in one of his orations against Cati- 
line, speaking of the credit due himself for having suppressed the conspir- 
acy of that arch-traitor, said, " If the glory of him who founded Eome was 
great, how much greater should be that of him who had saved it from over- 
throw, after it had grown to be mistress of the world !" So may it be said 
of the glory of that statesman or chieftain who shall snatch this republic 
from the vortex of revolution, now that it has expanded from ocean to 



20 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

ocean — has become the admiration of the world, and has rendered the 
fountains of the hves of thirty millions of people fountains of happiness. 

The vigorous measures adopted for the safety of Washington, and the 
government itself, may seem open to criticism, in some of their details, to 
those who have yet to learn that not only has war, Uke peace, its laws, but 
that it has also its privileges and its duties. Whatever of severity, or even 
of irregularity, may have arisen, will find its justification in the pressure of 
the terrible necessity under which the administration has been called to act. 
When a man feels the poignard of the destroyer at his bosom, he is not 
likely to consult the law books as to the mode or measure of his rights of 
self-defence. What is true of individuals is, in this respect, equally true of 
governments. The man who thinks he has become disloyal because of lohat the 
ad mi aist ration has done^ will probably discover^ after a close examination^ that 
he was disloyal before. But for what has been done, Washington might ere 
this have been a smouldering heap of ruins. 

They have noted the course of public affairs to little advantage who sup- 
pose that the election of Lincoln was the real ground of the revolutionary 
outbreak that has occurred. The roots of the revolution may be traced back 
for more than a quarter of a century, and an unholy lust for power is the 
soil out of which it sprang. A prominent member of the band of agitators 
declared in one of his speeches at Charleston, last November or December, 
that they had been occupied for thirty years in the work of severing South 
Carolina from the Union. When General Jackson crushed nullification, he 
said it would revive again under the form of the slavery agitation, and we 
have lived to see his prediction verified. Indeed, that agitation, during the 
last fifteen "or twenty years, has been almost the entire stock-in-trade of 
Southern politicians. The Southern people, known to be as generous in 
their impulses as they are chivalric, were not wrought into a frenzy of pas- 
sion by the intemperate words of a few fanatical abolitionists ; for these 
words, if left to themselves, would have fallen to the ground as pebbles into 
the sea, and would have been heard of no more. But it was the echo of 
those words, repeated with exaggerations for the thousandth time by South- 
ern politicians, in the halls of Congress, and in the deliberative and popular 
assemblies, and through the press of the South, that produced tlie exasper- 
ation which has proved so potent a lever in the hands of the conspirators. 
The cloud was fully charged, and the juggling revolutionists who held the 
wires, and could at will direct its lightnings, appeared at Charleston, broke 
up the Democratic convention assembled to nominate a candidate for the 
presidency, and thus secured the election of Mr. Lincoln. Having thus ren- 
dered this certain, they at once set to work to bring the popular mind of the 
South to the point of determining in advance that the election of a Repubhcan 
president would be, per se, cause for a dissolution of the Union. They were 
but too successful, and to this result the inaction and indecision of the bor- 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 21 

der states deplorably contributed. "\^'hen the election of Mr. Lincoln was 
announced, there was rejoicing in the streets of Charleston, and doubtless at 
other points in the South ; for it was believed by the conspirators that this 
had brought a tide in the current of their machinations which would bear 
them on to victory. The drama of secession was now open, and state after 
state rapidly rushed out of the Union, and their members withdrew from 
Congress. The revolution was pressed on with this hot haste in order that 
no time should be allowed for reaction in the Northern mind, or for any ad- 
justment of the slavery issues by the action of Congress or of the state legis- 
latures. Had the Southern members continued in their seats, a satisfactory 
compromise would, no doubt, have been arranged and passed before the ad- 
journment of Congress. As it was, after their retirement, and after Con- 
gress had become republican, an amendment to the constitution was adopted 
by a two-thirds vote, declaring that Congress should never interfere with 
slavery iu the states, and declaring, further, that this amendment should be 
irrevocable. Thus we falsified the clamor so long and so insidiously rung in 
the ears of the Southern people, that the abolition of slavery in the states 
was the ultimate aim of the Repubhcan party. But even this amendment, 
and all others which may be needed to furnish the guarantees demanded, 
are now defeated by the secession of eleven states, which, claiming to be out 
of the Union, will refuse to vote upon, and, in effect, will vote against, any 
proposals to modify the federal constitution. There are now thirty-four 
states in the confederacy, three-fourths of which, being twenty-six, must con- 
cur in the adoption of any amendment before it can become a part of the 
constitution; but the secession of eleven states leaves but twenty-three 
whose vote can possibly be secured, which is less than the constitutional 
numl)er. 

Thus we have the extraordinary and discreditable spectacle of a revolution 
made by certain states, professedly on the ground that guarantees for the 
safety of their institutions are denied them, and, at the same time, instead of 
co-operating with their sister states in obtaining these guarantees, they de- 
signedly assume a hostile attitude, and thereby render it constitutionally im- 
possible to secure them. This profound dissimulation shows that it was not 
the safety of the South, but its severance from the confederacy, which was 
sought from the beginning. Cotemporary with, and in some cases preced- 
ing, these acts of secession, the greatest outrages were committed upon the 
government of the United States by the states engaged in them. Its forts, 
arsenals, arms, barracks, custom-houses, post-ofiBces, moneys, and, indeed, 
every species of its property within the limits of these states, were seized 
and appropriated, down to the very hospital stores for the sick soldiers. 
More than half a million of dollars was plundered from the mint at New 
Orleans. United States vessels were received from the defiled hands of 
their ofQcers in command, and, as if in the hope of consecrating official 



22 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

treachery as one of the public virtues of the age, the surrender of an entire 
mihtary department by a general, to the keeping of whose honor it had been 
confided, was deemed worthy of the commendation and thanks of the conven- 
tions of several states. All these lawless proceedings were well understood 
to have been prompted and directed by men occupying seats in the capitol, 
some of whom were frank enough to declare that they could not and would 
not, though in a minority, live under a government which they could not 
control. In this declaration is found the key which unlocks the whole of 
the complicated machinery of this revolution. The profligate ambition of 
public men in all ages and lands has been the rock on which repubhcs have 
been split. Such men have arisen in our midst — men who, because unable 
permanently to grasp the helm of the ship, are willing to destroy it in the 
hope to command some one of the rafts that may float away from the wreck. 
The effect is to degrade us to a level with the military bandits of Mexico and 
South America, who, when beaten at an election, fly to arms, and seek to 
master by the sword what they have been unable to control by the ballot- 
box. 

The atrocious acts enumerated were acts of war, and might all have been 
treated as such by the late administration ; but the President patriotically 
cultivated peace — how anxiously and how patiently the country well knows. 
While, however, the revolutionary leaders greeted him vnth all hails to his face, 
they did not the less diligently continue to whet their swords behind his back. 
Immense military preparations wei-e made, so that when the moment for striking 
at the government of the United States arrived, the revolutionary states leaped 
into the contest clad in full armor. 

As if nothing should be wanting to darken this page of history, the seceded 
States have already entered upon the work of confiscating the debts due from 
their citizens to the North and North-west. The miUions thus gained will 
doubtless prove a pleasant substitute for those guarantees now so scornfully 
rejected. To these confiscations will probably succeed soon those of lands 
and negroes owned by citizens of loyal states ; and, indeed, the apprehen- 
sion of this step is already sadly disturbing the fidelity of non-resident pro- 
prietors. Fortunately, however, infirmity of faith, springing from such a 
cause, is not likely to be contagious. The vmr begun is being prosecuted by the 
Confederate States in a temper as fierce and unsparing as that which character- 
izes conflicts between the most hostile nations. Letters of marque avd repristds 
are being granted to all who seek them, so that our coasts will soon swarm 
with these piratical cruisers, as the President has properly denoimced them. 
Every buccaneer who desires to rob American commerce upon the ocean, 
can, for the asking, obtain a warrant to do so, in the name of the new repub- 
lic. To crown all, large bodies of Indians have been mustered into the ser- 
vice of the revolutionary states, and are now conspicuous in the ranks of the 
Southern army. A leading North Carolina journal, noting their stalwart 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 23 

frames and unerring markmanship, observes, with an exultation positively 
fiendish, that they are armed, not only with the rifle, but also with the scalp- 
ing -knife and tomahawk. 

Is Kentucky willing to link her name in history with the excesses and 
crimes which have sullied this revolution at every step of its progress? Can 
she soil her pure hands with its booty ? She possesses the noblest heritage 
that God has granted to his children ; is she prepared to barter it away for 
that miserable mess of pottage which the gratification of the unholy ambition 
of her public men would bring to her lips ? Can she, without laying her face 
in the very dust for shame, become a participant in the spoliation of the 
commerce of her neighbors and friends, by contributing her star, hitherto so 
stainless in its glory, to hght the corsair on his way ? Has the warwhoop 
which used to startle the sleep of our frontiers, so died away in her ears that 
she is willing to take the red^anded savage to her bosom as the champion of 
her rights and the representative of her spirit? Must she not first forget her 
own heroic sons, who perished, butchered and scalped, upon the disastrous 
field of Raisin? 

The object of the revolution, as avowed by all who are pressing it forward 
is the permanent dismerhberment of the Confederacy. The dream of recon- 
struction—used during the last winter as a lure to draw the hesitating or the 
hopeful into the movement— has been formally abandoned. If Kentucky 
separates herself from the Union, it must be upon the basis that the separ- 
ation is to be final and eternal. Is there aught in the organization or admin- 
istration of the government of the United States to justify, on her part, an 
act so solemn and so perilous? Could the wisest of her lawyers, if called 
upon, find material for an indictment in any or in all the pages of the history 
of the republic ? Could the most leprous-lipped of its calumniators point to 
a single state or territory, or community or citizen, that it has wronged or op- 
pressed? It would be impossible. So far as the slave states are concernecl 
their protection has been complete, and if it has not been, it has been the fault of 
their statesmen, who have had the control of the government since its founda- 
tion. 

The census returns show that during the year 1860, the fugitive slave law 
was executed more faithfuUy and successfuUy than it had been during the 
preceding ten years. Since the installation of President Lincoln, not a case 
has arisen in which the fugitive has not been returned, and that, too, without 
any opposition from the people. Indeed, the fidelity with which it was un- 
derstood to be the policy of the administration to enforce the provisions of 
this law, has caused a perfect panic among the runaway slaves in the free 
states, and they have been escaping in multitudes to Canada, unpursued and 
unreclaimed by their masters. Is there found in this, reason for a dissolu- 
tion of the Union ? 

That the slave states are not recognized as equals in the Confederacy, has 



24 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

for se^ era! years been the crv of demagogues and conspirators. But what is 
the truth ? Not only according to the theory, but the actual practice of the 
government, the slave states have ever been, and still are, in all respects, 
the peers of the free. Of the fourteen presidents who have been elected, 
seven were citizens of slave states, and of tlie seven remaining, three repre- 
sented Southern principles, and received the votes of the Southern people ; so 
that, in our whole history, but four presidents have been chosen who can be 
claimed as the special champions of the policy and principles of the free 
states, and even these so only in a modified sense. Does this look as if the 
South had ever been deprived of her equal share of the honors and powers of 
the government? The Supreme Court has decided that the citizens of the 
slave states can, at will, take their slaves into all the territories of the United 
States ; and this decision, which has never been resisted or interfered with 
in a single case, is the law of the land, and the whole power of the govern- 
ment is pledged to enforce it. That it will be loyally enforced by the present 
administration, I entertain no doubt. A Eepublican Congress, at the late 
session, organized three new territories, and in the organic law of neither was 
there introduced or attempted to be introduced, the slightest restriction upon 
the rights of the Southern emigrant to bring his slaves with him. At this 
moment, therefore, and I state it without qualification, there is not a terri- 
tory belonging to the United States into which the Southern people may not 
introduce their slaves at pleasure, and enjoy their complete protection. Ken- 
tucky should consider this, great and undeniable fact, before which all the 
frothy rant of demagogues and disunionists must disappear as a bank of fog 
before the wind. But were it otherwise, and did a defect exist in our organic 
law, or in the practical administration of the government, in reference to the 
rights of Southern slaveholders in the territories, still the question would be a 
mere abstraction, since the laws of climate forbid the establishment of slavery 
in such a latitude ; and to destroy such institutions as ours for such a cause, 
instead of patiently trying to remove it, would be little short of national in- 
sanity. It would be to burn the house down over our heads merely because 
there is a leak in the roof; to scuttle the ship in mid-ocean merely because 
there is a difference of opinion among the crew as to the point of the compass 
to which the vessel should be steered ; it would be, in fact, to apply the knife 
to the throat instead of to the cancer of the patient. 

But what remains ? Though, say the disunionists, the Fugitive Slave law 
is honestly enforced, and though, under the shelter of the Supreme Court, 
we can take our slaves into the territories, the Northern people will persist 
in discussing the institution of slavery, and therefore we will break up the 
government. It is true that slavery has been very intemperately discussed 
in the North, and it is equally true that until we have an Asiatic despotism, 
crushing out all freedom of speech and of the press, this discussion will prob- 
ably continue. In this age and country all institutions, human and divine, 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 25 

are discussed, and so they ought to be ; and all that cannot bear discussion 
must go to the wall, where they ought to go. It is not pretended, however, 
that the discussion of slavery, which has been continued in our country for 
more tlian forty years, has in any manner disturbed or weakened the founda- 
tion of the institution. On the contrary, we learn from the press of the se- 
ceded states that their slaves were never more tranquil or obedient. There 
are zealots — happily few in number — both North and South, whose language 
upon this question is alike extravagant and ahke deserving our condemna- 
tion. Those who assert that slavery should be extirpated by the sword, and 
those who maintain that the great mission of the white man upon earth is to 
enslave the black, are not far apart in the folly and atrocity of their senti- 
ments. 

Before proceeding further, Kentucky should measure well the depth of the 
gulf she is approaching, and look well to the feet of her guides. Before for- 
saking a Union in which her people have enjoyed such uninterrupted and 
such boundless prosperity, she should ask herself, not once, but many times, 
why do I go, and where am I going? In view of what has been said, it 
would be difBcult to answer the first branch of the inquiry, but to answer the 
second part is patent to all, as are the consequences which would follow the 
movement. In giving her great material and moral resources to the support 
of the Southern Confederacy, Kentucky might prolong the desolating struggle 
that rebellious states are making to overthrow a government which they have 
only known in its blessings; but the triumph of the government would 
nevertheless be certain in the end. She would abandon a government strong 
and able to protect her, for one that is iveak, and that contains, in the very ele- 
ments of Its lift, the seeds of distraction and early dissolution. She would adopt, 
as the laiv of her existence, the right of secession — a right which has no founda- 
tion in jurisprudence, or logic, or in our political history ; ivhich Madison, the 
father of the federal constitution, denounced; lohich has been denounced by 
most of the states and prominent statesmen noio insisting upon its exercise; 
which, in introducing a principle of indefinite disintegration, cuts up all confed- 
erate governments by the roots, and gives them over a prey to the caprices, and 
passions, and transient interests of their members, as autumnal leaves are given 
to the winds ivhich blow upon them. In 1814, the Richmond Enquirer, then, 
as now, the organ of public opinion in the South, pronounced secession to 
be treason, and nothing else, and such was then the doctrine of Southern 
statesmen. What was true then is equally true now. The prevalence of 
this pernicious heresy is mainly the fruit of that farce called "state rights," 
which demagogues have been so long playing under ,tragic mask, and which 
has done more than all things else to unsettle the foundations of the re- 
public, by estranging the people from the federal government, as one to be 
distrusted and resisted, instead of being, what it is, emphatically their own 
creation, at all times obedient to their will, and in its ministrations the 



26 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

grandest reflex of the greatness and beneficence of popular power that has 
ever ennobled the history of our race. Said Mr. Clay: "I owe a supreme al- 
legiance to the general government, and to my state a subordinate one." 
And this terse language disposes of the whole controversy which has arisen 
out of the secession movement in regard to the allegiance of the citizen. As 
the power of the states and federal governnent are in perfect harmony with 
each other, so there can be no conflict between the allegiance due to them ; 
each, while acting within the sphere of its constitutional authority, is entitled 
to be obeyed ; but when a state, throwing oS" all constitutional restraints, 
seeks to destroy the general government, to say that its citizens are bound 
to follow in its career of crime, and discard the supreme allegiance they owe 
to the government assailed, is one of the shallowest and most dangerous fal- 
lacies that has ever gained credence among men. 

Kentucky, occupying a central position in the Union, is now protected 
from the scourge of a foreign war, however much its ravages may waste the 
towns and cities upon our coasts, or the commerce upon our seas ; but as a 
member of the Southern Confederacy, she would be a frontier state, and ne- 
cessarily the victim of those border feuds and conflicts which have become 
proverbial in history alike for their fierceness and frequency. The people of 
the South now sleep quietly in their beds, while there is not a home in infat- 
uated and miguided Virginia that is not filled with the alarms and oppressed 
by the terrors of war. In the fate of the ancient commonwealth, dragged to 
the altar of sacrifice by those who should have stood between her bosom and 
every foe, Kentucky may read her own. No wonder, therefore, that she has 
been so coaxingly besought to unite her fortunes with those of the South, and to 
lay down the bodies of her chivalric sons as a breastwork, behind ivhich the 
Southern people may be sheltered. Even as attached to the Southern Confed- 
eracy, she would be weak for all the purposes of self-protection, as compared 
with her present position. But amid the mutations incident to such a help- 
less and disintegrating league, Kentucky would probably soon find herself 
adhering to a mere fi agment of the Confederacy, or it may be standing en- 
tirely alone, in the presence of tiers of free states, with populations exceed- 
ing, by many millions, her owti. Feeble states, thus separated from power- 
ful and warUke neighbors by ideal boundaries, or by fears as easily traversed 
as rivulets, are as insects that feed upon the hon's lip — liable at every mo- 
ment to be crushed. The recorded doom of multitudes of such, has left us a 
warning too solemn and impressive to be disregarded. 

Kentucky now scarcely feels the contribution she makes to support the 
government of the United States, but as a member of the Southern Confed- 
eracy, of whose policy free trade will be a cardinal principle, she will be bur- 
dened with direct taxation to the amount of double, or, it may be, triple or 
quadruple that which she now pays into her own treasury. Superadded to 
this will be required from her her share of those vast outlays necessary for 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 27 

the creation of a navy, the erection of forts and custom-houses along- a fron- 
tier of several thousand miles ; and for the maintenance of that large stand- 
ing army which will be indispensable at once for her safety, and for impart- 
ing to the new government that strong military character which, it has been 
openly avowed, the peculiar institutions of the South will inexorably demand. 

Kentucky now enjoys for her peculiar institution the protection of the Fu- 
gitive Slave law, loyally enforced by the government, and it is this law, 
effective in its power of recapture, but infinitely more potent in its moral 
agency in preventing the escape of slaves, that alone saves that institution 
in the border states from utter extinction. She cannot carry this law with 
her into the new Confederacy. She will, virtually, have Canada brought to 
her doors in the form of free states, whose population, relieved of all moral 
and constitutional obligations to deliver up fugitive slaves, will stand with 
open arms, inviting and welcoming them, and defending them, if need be, at 
the point of the bayonet. Under such influences, slavery will perish rapidly 
pass away in Kentucky, as a ball of snow would melt in a summer's sun. 

Kentucky, in her soul, abhors the African slave-trade, and turns away 
with unspeakable horror and loathing from the red altars of King Dahomey. 
But although this traffic has been temporarily interdicted hy the seceded states, 
it is loell understood that this step has been taken as a mere measure of policy for 
the pwpose of impressing the border states, and of conciliating the European 
powers. The ultimate legalization of this trade, by a republic professing to be 
based upon African servitude, mustfolloiv as certainly as does the conclusion from 
the premises of a mathematical proposition. Is Kentucky prepared to see the 
hand upon the dial-plate of her civilization rudely thrust back a century, and 
to stand before the world the confessed champion of the African slave-hun- 
ter? Is she, with her unsulhed fame, ready to become a pander to the ra- 
pacity of the African slave-trader, who burdens the very winds of the sea 
with the moans of the wretched captives whose limbs he has loaded with 
chains, and whose hearts he has broken ? I do not, I cannot, believe it. 

For this catalogue of what Kentuck}^ must suffer in abandoning her 
present honored and secure position, and becoming a member of the Southern 
Confederacy, what will be her indemnity? Nothing, absolutely nothing. 
The ill-woven ambition of some of her sons may possibly reach the Presi- 
dency of the new republic ; that is all. Alas ! alas ! for that dream of the 
Presidency of a Southern republic, which has disturbed so many pillows in 
the South, and perhaps some in the West, also, and whose lurid light, like a 
demon's torch, is leading a nation to perdition ! 

The clamor that in insisting upon the South obeying the laws, the great 
principle that all popular governments rest upon the consent of the governed 
is violated, should not receive a moment's consideration. Popular govern- 
ment does, indeed, rest upon the consent of the governed, but it is upon the 
consent, not of all, but of a majority of the governed. Criminals are every day 



28 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

punished, and made to obey the hiws. certainly against their vnR. and no 
man supposes that the principle referred to is thereby invaded. A bill passed 
by the legislature, by the majority of a single vote only, though the con- 
stituents of all who voted against it should be, in fact as they are held to be 
in theory, opposed to its provisions, still is not the less operative as a lavr. and 
no right of self-government is thereby trampled upon. The clamor alluded 
to assumes that the states are separate and independent governments, and 
that laws enacted under the authority of all may be resisted and repealed at 
the pleasure of each. The people of the United States, so far as the powers 
of the general government are concerned, are a unit, and laws passed by a 
majority of all are binding upon all. The laws and constitution, however, 
which the South now resists, have been adopted by her sanction, and the 
right she now claims is that of a feeble minority to repeal what a majority 
has adopted. Xothing could be more faDacious. 

Civil war. under all circumstances, is a terrible calamity, and yet. from the 
selfish ambition and wickedness of men. the best governments have not been 
able to escape it. In regarding that which has been forced upon the gov- 
ernment of the United States. Kentucky should not look so much at the 
means which may be necessarDy employed in its prosecution, as at the 
machinations by which this national tragedy has been brought upon us. 
When I look upon this bright land, a few months since so prosperous, so 
tranquU. and so free, and now behold it desolated by war, and the firesides 
of its thirty millions of people darkened, and their bosoms wrung with an- 
guish, and know, as I do, that all this is the work of a score or two of men, 
who, over all this national ruin and despair, are preparing to carve with 
the sword their way to seats of permanent power, I cannot but feel that 
they are accumulating upon their soil an amount of guilt hardly equalled in 
all the atrocities of treason and homicide that have degraded the annals of 
our race from the foundations of the world. Kenhicky may rest well assured 
i^iat this conflict wJiich is one of self-defence., iciU fe jmrsued on the part of the 
Government in the paternal spirit in which a father seeks to reclaim his erring 
offspring. Xo conquest, no effusion of Nood is sou.ght. In sorrow, not in anger, 
the prayer of all is, that the end may he reached without loss of life or waste of 
property. Among the most powerful instrumentahties relied on for re-estab- 
lishing the authority of the government, is that of the Union sentiment of 
the South, sustained by a liberated press. It is now trodden to the earth 
under a reign of terrorism which has no parallel but in the worst days of the 
French revolution. The presence of the govermnent wtM enable it to re- 
bound and look its oppressors in the face. At present we are assured that 
in the seceded states no man expresses an opinion opposed to the revolu- 
tion but at the hazard of his life and property. The only light which is ad- 
mitted into political discussion is that which flashes from the sword or gleams 
from glistening bayonets. A few days since, one of the United State Sena- 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 29 

tors from Yirginia published a manifesto, iu which he announces, with orac- 
ular solemnity and severity, that all citizens who would not vote for seces- 
sion, but were in favor of the Union — not should or ought to — but "must 
leave the state." These words have in them decidedly the crack of the 
overseer's whip. The Senator evidently treats Virginia as a great negro 
quarter, in which the lash is the appropriate emblem of authority, and the 
only argument he will condescend to use. However the freemen of other 
parts of the state may abase themselves under the exercise of this insolent 
and prescriptive tyrannj^, should the Senator, with his scourge of slaves, en- 
deavor to drive the people of Western Yirginia from their homes, I will only 
say, in the language of the narrative of Gilpin's ride, 

" May I be there to see !" 

It would certainly prove a deeply interesting spectacle. 

It is true that before this deliverance of the popular mind of the South 
from the threatenings and alarm which have subdued it can be accomplished, 
the remorseless agitators who have made this revolution, and now hold its 
reins, must be discarded alike from the public confidence and the public ser- 
vice. The country in its agony is feeling their power, and w^e well under- 
stand how difficult will be the task of overthrowing the ascendency they 
have secured. But the Union men of the South — believed to be in the ma- 
jority in every seceded state, except, perhaps. South Carolina — aided by the 
presence of the government, will be fully equal to the emergency. Let 
these agitators perish, politically, if need be, by scores, 

" A breath can unmake them as a breath has made ;" 

but destroy this republic, and 

•' Where is that Promethean heat 
That can its light relume ?" 

Once entombed, when will the angel of the resurrection descend to the 
portals of its sepulchre? There is not a voice which comes to us from the 
cemetery of nations that does not answer: "Never, never!" Amid the tor- 
ments of perturbed existence, we may have glimpses of rest and of freedom, 
as the maniac has glimpses of reason between the paroxysms of his madness, ' 
but we shall attain to neither national dignity nor national repose. We shall 
be a mass of jarring, warring, fragmentary states, enfeebled and demoralized, 
without power at home, or respectability abroad, and, like the republics of 
Mexico and South America, we will drift away on a shoreless and ensan- 
guined sea of civil commotion, from which, if the teachings of history are to 
be trusted, we shall finally be rescued by the iron hand of some military 
wrecker, who will coin the shattered elements of our greatness and of our 
strength in a diadem and a throne. Said M. Fould, the great French states- 
man, to an American citizen, a few weeks since: "Your republic is dead, 



yO THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 

and it is probably the last the world will ever see. You will have a reign of 
terrorism, and after that two or three monarchies." All this may be verified 
should this revolution succeed. 

Let us, then, twine each thread of the glorious tissue of our country's flag 
about our heart-strings, and looking upon our homes and catching the spirit 
that breathes upon us from the battle-fields of our fathers, let us resolve, 
that, come weal or woe, we will, in life and in death, now and forever, stand 
by the stars and the stripes. They have floated over our cradles, let it be our 
prayer and our struggle that they shall float over our graves. They have 
been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans, to the 
halls of the Montezumas, and amid the solitudes of every sea ; and every- 
where, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, they have 
led the brave and the free to victory and to glory. It has been my fortune to 
look upon this flag in foreign lands, and amid the gloom of an oriental des- 
potism, and right well do I know, by contrast, how bright are its stars, and 
how sublime are its inspirations ! If this banner, the emblem for us of all 
that is grand in human history, and of all that is transporting in human hope, 
is to be sacrificed on the altars of a Satanic ambition, and thus disappear for- 
ever amid the night and tempest of revolution, then will I feel — and who 
shall estimate the desolation of that feeling? — that the sun has indeed been 
stricken from the sky of our lives, and that henceforth we shall be but wan- 
derers and outcasts, with naught but the bread of sorrow and penury for our 
lips, and with hands ever outstretched in feebleness and supplication, on 
which, in any hour, a military tyrant may rivet the fetters of a despairing 
bondage. May God in his infinite mercy save you and me, and the land we 
so much love, from the doom of such a degradation. 

No contest so momentous as this has arisen in human history, for, amid 
all the conflicts of men and of nations, the life of no such government as 
ours has ever been at stake. Our fathers won our independence by the 
blood and the sacrifices of a seven years' war, and we have maintained it 
against the assaults of the greatest power upon the earth : and the question 
now is, whether we are to perish by our own hands, and have the epitaph 
of suicide written upon our tomb ? The ordeal through which we are pass- 
ing must involve immense suffering and losses for us all, but the expenditure 
of not merely hundreds of millions, but of billions of treasure, will be well 
made, if the result will be the preservation of our institutions. 

Could my voice reach every dwelling in Kentucky, I would implore its 
inmates — if they would not have the rivers of their prosperity shrink away, 
as do unfed streams beneath the summer heats — to rouse themselves from 
their lethargy, and fly to the rescue of their country, before it is everlastingly 
too late. Man should appeal to man, and neighborhood to neighborhood, 
until the electric fires of patriotism shall flash from heart to heart in one 
unbroken current throughout the land. It is a time in which the workshop, 



THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 31 

the office, the counting-house, and the field, may well be abandoned for the 
solemn duty that is upon us, for all these toils will ])ut bring treasure, not 
for ourselves, but for the spoiler, if this revolution is not arrested. 

We are all^ with our every earthly inter est^ embarked in mid-ocean on the 
same co7nmon deck. The howl of the storm is in our ears, and " the lightning's 
red glare is painting hell on the sky ;" while the nolle ship pitches and rolls 
under the lashings of the waves, the cry is heard thai she has sprung a leak at 
many points, and that the rushing waters are mounting rapidly in the hold. The 
man who, in such an hour, will not work at the pumps, is either a inaniac 
or a monster. 

Sincerely yours, 

JOSEPH HOLT. 



ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED EDITION 

OF 

COOPER'S NOVELS 

EMBELLISHED WITH FIVE HTINDEED ORIGINAL DRAWINGS 

By F. O. C. DABLEY. 



This beautiful Edition of Cooper's Works was commenced February 1st, 
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